The mad ravings of a feverish mind. fuguestateknitter at gmail dot com

Overslept Sunday

Church was at 9 a.m. Choir was supposed to be practicing by 8:30 (quietly and crowdedly) in the Music Director’s office WITH the children’s choir. Yeah. No. Not because I didn’t want to, but because yet again, I fell asleep at some ungodly (pardon the pun) hour and grossly overslept. Like two hours overslept. Sorry, Nancy. I must still be detoxing recovering from last weekend and the crazy week I had afterward.

I didn’t have much more work last week than I normally do. True, we had a long day of settlement negotiations on Tuesday, but the rest of the week was fairly normal. My sleep patterns were just terrible. By the time I’d get home in the evening, I’d be feeling downright sick to the point of a fever, would fall asleep in front of the boob tube, and then wake up hours before dawn, unable to go back to sleep. Something had to give. I finally did get 8 hours of good sleep but at the expense of letting my fellow choir members down yet again. Hopefully, I am back on track now.

Well, you didn’t tune in to hear that big bunch of boring.

About the photos above and left: one of the knitters on retreat last weekend had very cool DPNs. Blackthorn double pointed needles (DPNs) were one of the first, if not THE first, DPNs produced with carbonite fibers. Backing up, breakage is one of the issues with DPNs of the type used in knitting socks on very fine yarns. You want a very thin needle because you want your fabric to have the density necessary for a warm pair of socks. This, in turn, means you are putting more pressure than usual on the needles. Most DPNs are made of either metal (which is very slippery) or wood (which is not but tends to break). Carbonite fibers combined with wood or similar material creates a lovely compromise. Blackthorn DPNs are known for being “grabby” which prevents the needles from slipping through the loops. Unfortunately, these are hard to find, as the owner of the company has stopped production. WEBS (yarn.com) has a few of them, but they are on backorder. WEBS also sells Carbonz, made of similar materials, for DPNs and circulars.

I was able to find a Blackthorn DPN case on Etsy for a not-so-bad price and promptly got it, knowing it would be just the empty case, but hoping to use it for my other DPNs. Imagine my delight when I saw the seller had included the cute little needle gauge:)!

I have KnitPicks DPNs made of wood – some of which sadly have already broken – and many of those are in use right now. I decided to continue to keep those in their original plastic case, which is quite nice and fits just about anywhere. It is nice to have a place to store my Carbonz and other DPNs for sock and sweater knitting.

On the knitting front, I haven’t added much to the green striped socks since my last post, but I have made a bit of progress on the Nordic Cowl. The patterning on each row is not hard to remember. In fact, it’s addictive. The yarn is from Sugarloaf Alpaca Farm – purchased at our annual Retreat at the Claggett Center in Adamstown, MD about three years ago. It is both soft and strong. You almost feel like you are knitting with soft string. It was a bear to wind, having been skeined rather haphazardly, so I wound it by hand but worth the effort. Because I had bought the amounts I had (2 skeins of cream, one of olive, one of light blue) I decided to do Chart A in olive and cream and Chart B (the “negative” of Chart A) in light blue and cream. It’s an interesting pattern. Right now it looks like a cowl for a giraffe, but that row of purling will be a turning round to help fold the blue and white section to the inside or the outside. It will be a reversible cowl.

Not much progress on the Truckbeth Carbeth, probably because I am about to start the sleeves and am procrastinating/have other work to do.

Friday and yesterday I met played Ring Around the Beltway and met with five different clients. On my way home I stopped by a local yarn shop that has decided to close up shop in April. Everything in the store was 20 percent off. I was torn between going there or supporting the remaining LYS in the area. Ultimately, I went there, because I had another stop on my way home in that direction. I was drawn to these two beauties:

The color – or lack thereof – was perfect and boy is this stuff soft! It’s Juniper Moon Herriott Fine – a light fingering weight yarn – about 900 yards of it – out of alpaca and nylon/polyamide. I set about looking for a pattern for it as soon as I got home. I decided on Jared Flood’s Kelpie. It’s a simple, yet elegant garter stitch half-hap type of shawl, using small amounts of contrast colors in a feather and fan edge. I have more than enough yardage here and the neutral/natural yarn will provide an excellent backdrop to the bits of color at the edge. I’ve already put it together in hopes of casting on soon. Am planning on finishing the Nordic Cowl and putting a dent into the green striped socks and the two sweaters I’m working on first. But it is nice to have it waiting for me, already “kitted” up. I decided to use size 5 circs instead of the size 6 called for in the pattern because I tend to knit just a smidge on the loose side.The other yarns are leftover skeins of Cascade 220 fingering weight wool.

It’s time for me to get back to my regularly scheduled life, so I will leave you to the “hap”py contemplation of the above picture. 😉